An Investigation Into Google?s Maccabees Update

[djbaxter]

Long but worth the read...

An Investigation Into Google?s Maccabees Update
by Dom-Woodman, The Moz Blog
January 22, 2018

December brought us the latest piece of algorithm update fun. Google rolled out an update which was quickly named the Maccabees update and the articles began rolling in (SEJ , SER).

The webmaster complaints began to come in thick and fast, and I began my normal plan of action: to sit back, relax, and laugh at all the people who have built bad links, spun out low-quality content, or picked a business model that Google has a grudge against (hello, affiliates).

Then I checked one of my sites and saw I?d been hit by it. Hmm.

Time to check the obvious
I didn?t have access to a lot of sites that were hit by the Maccabees update, but I do have access to a relatively large number of sites, allowing me to try to identify some patterns and work out what was going on. Full disclaimer: This is a relatively large investigation of a single site; it might not generalize out to your own site.

Read more...

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hey David,

I'm just catching up on this update and have not read the Moz post yet, but Barry's post on the topic is really interesting.

If his analysis is right it sounds like this could affect all the local SAB sites that tend to create lots of similar landing pages with different services and cities.

Google Maccabees Update Analysis: Sites Targeting Many Keyword Permutations

By far, the biggest bulk of sites that I saw got hit all had tons and tons of landing pages target massive arrays of keyword permutations. So for example, if they are a travel site, they would target all the destinations they service and also add landing pages for [destination sub name] + [activity name] and sometimes even go beyond that. If they were a service business, they would target [city name] + [service A] and then [city name] + [service B] and so on.

Anyone seeing or hearing about local sites that got hit?

 

[djbaxter]

The plot thickens...